2(b)

What is the function of music, and in particular of contemporary music? Or is it autonomous and does it serve no practical purpose? But if it is autonomous, how can we gain access to it? And if it coincides with its own functionality, is it not then banal, commercial and too obvious?

Does the functionality of art not consist in the fact that it maintains a relationship with reality by imitating or representing that reality? According to this popular view, art stands opposite reality, and the task of the artist is to bridge the yawning chasm between the two, thus making the other side recognizable to us.

But is it not rather the case that, out of a kind of disinterestedness, art brings reality into being, and does so in such a way that this appears to us as the one and only, unique reality, which it also symbolizes and indeed itself is? This would mean that art has a kind of sublime functionality, and one which particularly applies to music. Cf. Die Rose